Munich, prewar: Tom Heinemann's family, international art dealers, run Galerie Heinemann:

My grandmother ran the business until 1938. Franziska Heinemann, known as Mimi. She ran the gallery very successfully. Then she got arrested on some trumped up currency charges and put into prison.

They broke into her flat, stole all the paintings. She paid, somebody told me, a million marks ransom in return for an exit visa. But was told she's got to sell the gallery, it had to be Aryanised.

The man who bought it was actually a member of staff. A Mr Zinckgraf, who had been with them for 40 years. The German authorities were very suspicious but eventually passed it. Now, Zinckgraf didn't have the money. But he had a backer, a director of the Reichsbank, who had the money. He gave him the money to buy the gallery for flumpence, ha’penny, in return for profit sharing. The gallery was then changed to Galerie Lenbachplatz, because it couldn't be called Galerie Heinemann anymore.

Zinckgraf carried on from 1938 until he died in 1954. When my father returned to Germany he did a deal with him. But he let him carry on. Mr Zinckgraf was a decent man. When he died, everything was auctioned off & that was the end of everything.

In 1938 Tom & his parents escaped to Switzerland, where they had a gallery in Lucerne.

I was just told I was going to fly to Zurich. So exciting. On the flight, since I was the only child there, the pilot asked me to come to the front & I sat on the co-pilot seat. This was a Hungarian airline. Jews weren't allowed to fly on what was Lufthansa in those days.

Tom has many memories of the Galerie Heinemann in Munich before it was seized:

In 1902 they had a big house built in Lenbachplatz. The gallery was on the ground floor & mezzanine. Above that my grandparents lived. We lived on the top floor. My grandmother was a chainsmoker. She smoked over 100 cigarettes a day. I can remember this thick smoke in her office, everything stinking of cigarettes. She always had a big dog. I used to run up & down the gallery as a child. I used to enjoy that.

There was a courtyard at the back, & a goods lift there. That went down into the basement. There was a carpenter shop there. They had a full-time cabinet maker, who made picture frames & packing cases for sending them all over the place. I loved to go down there as a child & mess about. He tried to teach me some woodwork.

There was a big balcony the width of the building. I would run up & down on the tricycle there. I could look down on the Lenbachplatz. I loved doing that, watching the world go by.

I remember the big Nazi parades with music. Of course I thought it was very exciting. All these bands in brown & black with flags.

Hitler was very often in Munich. They pulled down the synagogue well before Kristallnacht. It was said, because Hitler, when he came to the Braune Haus, from the station he had to drive past the synagogue. And he hated it so much that he told them, ‘Pull that bloody thing down.’ My grandparents were founder members. I’ve still got their receipt with the number of the Betstuhl [seat in the synagogue], as they call it.

Eventually, the gallery building was pulled down. The facade is still there, because there was Denkmalschutz [protection order]. But behind, there’s an office block now, there's nothing there anymore now of the old gallery.

Tom Heinemann

Memories

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